OSHO TimesBody DharmaBeyond the Herd Mentality

Beyond the Herd Mentality

“The third body is bigger than the second, subtler than the second, higher than the second.

“Animals have the second body but not the third body. Animals are so vital. See a lion walking. What beauty, what grace, what grandeur. Man has always felt jealous. See a deer running. What weightlessness, what energy, what a great energy phenomenon! Man has always felt jealous. But man’s energy is moving higher.

“The third body is manumaya kosha, the mental body. This is bigger, more spacious than the second. And if you don’t grow it, you will remain almost just a possibility of man but not a real man. It is the mind that makes you man. But, more or less, you don’t have it. What you have in its place is just a conditioned mechanism. You live by imitation: then you don’t have a mind.

“When you start living on your own, spontaneous, when you start answering your life problems on your own, when you become responsible, you start growing in manumaya kosha. Then the mindbody grows.

“Become more and more alive, authentic, responsive. Even if there is a possibility to go astray, go astray, because there is no way to grow if you are so afraid of committing errors. Errors are good. Mistakes have to be committed. Never commit the same mistake again, but never be afraid of committing mistakes. People who become so afraid of committing mistakes never grow. They go on sitting in their place, afraid to move. They are not alive.

“The mind grows when you face, encounter, situations on your own. You bring your own energy to solve them. Don’t go asking for advice forever. Take the reins of your life in your own hands; that’s what I mean when I say do your thing. You will be in trouble – it is safer to follow others. It is convenient to follow the society, to follow the routine, the tradition, the scripture. It is very easy because everybody is following them; you have just to become a dead part of the herd, you have just to move with the crowd wherever it is going. It is none of your responsibility.

“But your mental body, your manumaya kosha, will suffer tremendously, terribly it will not grow. You will not have your own mind, and you will miss something very, very beautiful and something that functions as a bridge for higher growth.

“So always remember, whatsoever I say to you, you can take it in two ways. You can simply take it on my authority – ‘Osho says so; it must be true. Then you will suffer, then you will not grow. Whatsoever I say, listen to it, try to understand it, implement it in your life, see how it works, and then come to your own conclusions. They may be the same, they may not be. They can never be exactly the same because you have a different personality, a unique being. Whatsoever I am saying is my own. It is bound to be in deep ways rooted in me. You may come to similar conclusions, but they cannot be exactly the same. So my conclusions should not be made your conclusions.

“You should try to understand me, you should try to learn, but you should not collect knowledge from me, you should not collect conclusions from me. Then your mindbody will grow.

“...Once you are beyond the mind body, for the first time you become aware that you are not the mind but the witness. Below the mind you remain identified with it. Once you know that thoughts, mental images and ideas are just objects, floating clouds in your consciousness; you are separate from them...immediately.

“You become beyond body... one who is no longer confined to any body, one who knows that he is not the body, gross or subtle, one who knows that he is infinite, with no boundaries. Mahavideha means one who has come to feel that he has no boundaries. All boundaries are confinements, imprisonments; and he can break them, drop them and can become one with the infinite sky.”